Sodexo is extending its work with food charity The Bread and Butter Thing – Image from Sodexo
A news round-up of stories in the FM sector
Organisation: Sodexo
Partnership: The Bread and Butter Thing (TBBT)
Announcement: The Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation is extending its work with food redistribution charity The Bread and Butter Thing (TBBT), to help to provide nutritious food for thousands of families in the North of England while simultaneously reducing food waste.
Description: TBBT is a food redistribution charity that runs more than 60 mobile food clubs, taking affordable food into some of the UK’s poorest communities. It uses surplus food as a catalyst to have a transformative effect on people’s lives. It aims to people to enable them to better manage limited funds – and encourage them to eat more healthily. The cost of living crisis has led to a big increase in demand for TBBT membership. It now has 27,000 members, with 1,500 new families registering every month.
Details: TBBT redistributes over 100 tonnes of food a week. Sodexo’s partnership with TBBT began in February 2021. Over the past year, the partnership has evolved, with Sodexo using its services and network by trialling food redistribution activities that use food surplus and address food insecurity.
Background: UNICEF estimated in 2017 that 19% of children under 15 live with someone who faces moderate or severe food insecurity, and although on a global scale, hunger in the UK may seem low, compared with food insecurity levels in the EU, the UK ranks poorly. Hunger in the UK puts it fourth behind Romania, Bulgaria, and Lithuania. However, figures from WRAP state that over two million tonnes of the food that goes to waste each year are still edible - enough for 1.3 billion meals.
Organisation: Clivet
Announcement: AQX H is the new air handling unit for applications with high hygiene standards.
Description: Available with multiple filter stages with minimum final filtration class ISO 16890 ePM1 85%. To ensure maximum indoor air quality and human health, AQX H air handling units can be equipped with UV-C lamps or photocatalytic oxidation modules.
Details: The Clivet AQX H series is available in 32 standard sizes able to cover capacities from 1,500 to 100,000 m3/h (considering a speed of 2.5 m/s on the exchangers), but it is also designed to adapt to any architectural or design constraint. The height and width can be varied in 50 mm increments. The modular structure makes it possible to create a fully customisable product. For single-flow units, it is possible to have a completely in-line configuration or in-line configuration with partial vertical development; for double-flow units the in-line, overlapping or side-by-side configurations are also available.
Background: There is a need to satisfy every type of design requirement in applications requiring high hygiene standards such as hospitals, the food industry, pharmaceuticals and microelectronics.
Organisation: EMCOR UK
Announcement: The FM and workplace management group has released its Responsible Business Report for 2021/2022.
Description: The report sets out the group’s vision to create a better world at work for people, communities and the planet. It is specifically focused on three core areas: people, the planet and partnerships and has selected eight of the United Nations’ Global Goals where it believes it can make the biggest impact in delivering measurable benefits.
Details: These are:
- Global Goal 3: Ensuring healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages;
- Global Goal 5: Gender equality;
- Global Goal 8: Promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all;
- Global Goal 9: Building resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and fostering innovation;
- Global Goal 10: Reducing inequalities within and among countries;
- Global Goal 12: Ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns;
- Global Goal 13: Taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts;
- Global Goal 17: Strengthening the means of implementation and revitalising the global partnership for sustainable development.
Background: The company said that it takes a “multi-faceted approach” to health and wellbeing and has developed a wellbeing maturity model to measure 17 wellbeing indicators. It has introduced a range of employee policies to enhance life at work including a revised maternity and paternity policy, and the Real Living Wage or above for all employees. It also aims to measure its environmental and social impact where possible and has adopted the National TOMs Framework to measure social value, alongside a Sustainability Dashboard.
Organisation: Elior UK
Partnership: The Natasha Allergy Research Foundation
Announcement: The contract caterer is supporting the foundation’s first clinical trial to aid its mission ‘to make allergies history’. If the venture is successful, the company says this will enable the NHS to provide cost-effective treatments for people living with food allergies.
Description: Children and young people with milk and peanut allergies will be recruited for an immunotherapy trial. The study aims to plug the current oral immunotherapy research gap by proving that everyday foods can be used as a practical treatment for children and young adults with allergies and at a fraction of the cost to the NHS.
Details: The three-year £2.2 million pilot will be the first big study funded by the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, set up by Nadim and Tanya Ednan-Laperouse, parents of Natasha who died, aged 15, from a severe food allergic reaction.
Background: The trial will be led by researchers at the University of Southampton and University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust partnering with Imperial College London, both World Allergy Organisation Centres of Excellence, together with University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, Newcastle University and Sheffield’s Children’s Hospital. The venture is also supported by other founding partners including Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Co-op, Lidl, Morrisons, Greggs, Pret A Manger, Costa Coffee, Burger King, KFC, Just Eat, Bakkavor, Bidfood, Leon, Cooplands and Uber Eats.
Organisation: Johnson Controls
Service: Home Fire Sprinkler Week
Announcement: The global leader for smart, healthy and sustainable buildings, is calling for organisations to take urgent action for safety compliance across high-rise residential development during Home Fire Sprinkler Week, which ends tomorrow (21 May).
Description: The need for fire suppression and general safety in high-rise residential buildings is indisputable. The cladding crisis highlights the urgent need for legislation, building regulations, and standards to be upheld and revised where required.
Details: The firm offers five tips for good fire safety practice and effective fire suppression:
- Use experienced engineers: This is paramount, as a poor supplier choice leads to inexperienced sub-contractors carrying out work they cannot deliver safely, resulting in delays and potentially serious compliance risk.
- The correct contractor: It is important to choose a contractor that services to recognised standards and carries one of the industry-approved third-party certifications within its scope: LPS1048, FIRAS, or IFC.
- Adhering to regulations: Sprinklers in new high-rise residential buildings over 11m are now a requirement, and every commercial or industrial property must have a person who is responsible for fire safety and compliance.
- Effective installation: Many contractors are not used to high-rise buildings and the complexity required in sprinkler installation, and this kind of expertise is where third-party accredited contractors are essential.
- Sprinkler maintenance: Best practice starts with weekly or monthly checks in-house, with experts employed on a quarterly, six-monthly or annual basis to ensure that systems are cared for and in good condition.
Organisation: Amey
Partnership: HMP Low Newton
Announcement: Besides cleaning and maintaining facilities for its clients among HM Prison Service, the infrastructure services and engineering company is supporting the rehabilitation of female prisoners by teaching them new FM skills prior to release through its Clean, Rehabilitative, Enabling & Decent (CRED) programme.
Description: Developed in partnership with the MoJ and HMPPS, CRED currently provides prisoners at 33 prisons across the country with a chance to undertake work placement roles alongside its teams. At Her Majesty's Young Offender Institution Low Newton, near Durham, 10 female prisoners, over a three-year period, have taken part, gaining new skills that will help them pursue their chosen career paths.
Details: Prisoners who have taken part in CRED are able to progress their skills by working towards a vocational qualification in painting and decorating supported via the prison’s education department. There are currently three women enrolled on the course, who combine classroom learning with hands-on practical experience.
Background: CRED was launched at Low Newton in 2019, providing inmates with skills such as painting and decorating. They have also worked alongside Amey Handyman to assemble new furniture and beds and install noticeboards in the cells. About 193 cells have been refurbished so far, with 20 cells left before the whole prison is completed under CRED.
Organisation: National Skills Academy for Food & Drink
Partnership: Food and Drink Federation
Announcement: The organisations are calling on manufacturers of all sizes to back a new Careers Passport and help solve the chronic labour shortages in the industry by backing the Food & Drink Careers Passport, set to be introduced soon in England and Wales. There are currently about 500,000 vacancies across the UK’s farm-to-fork supply chain.
Description: It will offer pre-entry accreditation to those seeking entry-level roles. The scheme speeds up interview shortlisting and job onboarding, saving time and money for firms and fast-tracking new talent into the sector. It is designed to make it easier to find new recruits with Food Safety, HACCP, Health and Safety and Allergen Awareness accreditation, to provide a common industry standard and raise the profile of industry jobs.
Details: A range of firms have already pledged support for the passport including Premier Foods, Gressingham Foods, Glanbia Cheese, Greencore and Pukka Pies. Interested businesses can find out more at: www.fdcp.co.uk.
Amey is supporting the rehabilitation of female prisoners by teaching them new FM skills – Image from Amey
